Use your numbers
The calculator does arithmetic on what you enter.
1099 contractor
Health coverage for 1099 contractors, and the repayment trap in 2026
You are paid on a 1099, your income is different every year, and you buy your own coverage. That combination just became considerably more expensive to get wrong.
2026 change
The change that targets people like you.
When you buy marketplace coverage you estimate next year's income. If you take the current cost tax credit in advance, it is applied monthly and reconciled at filing against what you actually earned.
Until now, if you underestimated and earned more, there was a cap on how much of that credit you had to repay. For tax years beginning after 31 December 2025 that cap was removed at every income level. And if your income lands above 400 percent of the federal poverty line, you are generally not eligible for the credit at all, so the entire advance comes back.
Salaried employees know their income in January. You do not. A strong year, a large contract landing in December, a client paying early, any of it can move you across a line you estimated against eleven months earlier.
That is not a small print detail for contractors. It is the main risk in how you currently buy coverage.
Network
The other problem.
Individual market coverage at a cost a contractor will tolerate is usually a narrow network HMO. Referrals to see specialists, a short provider list, and awkward the moment you work in another state.
Contractors travel and often work across state lines. A regional network is a poor fit for how you actually work.
Change
What changes.
Group coverage needs an employer and an employee. In a co-employment structure the owner becomes a W-2 employee of the co-employer and coverage sits inside an established group master plan. It is not marketplace coverage, so it is not the thing being reconciled against a current cost tax credit.
Whether that leaves you better off depends on your income, your state, your entity and what you pay now. The licensed provider decides whether you can enroll.
Calculator first
Run it against your own figures.
Remove what does not fit
It eliminates what you do not qualify for and shows what remains.
Stop if staying put wins
Not an average of contractors, not a projection. Your numbers. If staying where you are is better, it says so.
Move to
What you would be moving to.
A group-plan path. Specialists without referral, a network that works wherever your work takes you, and a far broader provider list.
Dental, vision, a Vestwell retirement plan and workers compensation can run through the same structure. All optional.
For the network details, read the Group-plan access page.
Objections
The questions 1099 contractors ask first.
My income is genuinely unpredictable.
That is the argument for looking at this, not against it. Unpredictable income is what the repayment change punishes.
I do not have an entity.
Many contractors do not. Enter your position as it stands.
Some years I am under the threshold.
Then some years the marketplace may suit you better, and the calculator will tell you when that is true.
I am on a spouse's plan part of the year.
Enter it. Coverage gaps and partial years change the arithmetic.
FAQ
1099 contractor coverage questions.
The reconciliation risk is already in effect for this tax year.